


Now and at the Hour of Our Death

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Dysfunctional Family, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Minor Character Death, Religion, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Roman Catholicism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4072315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before she died, Matt's grandmother used to look after him in the afternoons and evenings, while his dad worked a series of short-term jobs.  She wasn't as strict about homework as Matt's dad, but she was strict in other ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now and at the Hour of Our Death

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 4/5/15 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #225. It has been slightly revised and extended from the draft on my journal.

Before she died, Matt's grandmother used to look after him in the afternoons and evenings, while his dad worked a series of short-term jobs in construction, roadwork, moving: whoever paid the most and was willing to hire a man who cancelled on short notice whenever he could scrape together a boxing match. Sara Murdock had a tiny rent-controlled apartment two blocks north of Matt's own home, and Matt would walk to there after school or CCD, to keep him off the streets and out of trouble.

She wasn't as strict about homework as Matt's dad, which was sort of nice even though it only meant he got stuck staying up late to finish everything once he actually got home. She'd let him watch television and listen to his excited descriptions of exactly why his favorite (and in retrospect, amazingly ridiculous) cartoons were the most awesome things ever.

But she was strict in other ways.

She taught Matt to pray the rosary -- "In Latin, as it should be; none of this newfangled English rite nonsense" -- and also the Angelus, which they recited in unison, bowing their heads in respect for the Incarnation, precisely at six o'clock every day. Then she'd serve dinner, usually some variation on soup or baked beans, and walk him home to wait for his dad.

Matt usually escaped into in his bedroom the minute he heard his dad's footsteps in the hallway and key in the door. It was bad enough overhearing his dad and grandmother argue; getting pulled into the fights was worse. He knew Jack Murdock was a disappointment to his mother. He knew she regretted her marriage, regarded her son and grandson as proof of her own weakness and sin. He knew the devil took a special interest in their family. He didn't need to see proof repeated every night.

She gave Matt a set of rosary beads for his seventh birthday -- "I should've done that a long time ago, but _some people_ said you were too young for the weight. Feh. As if ignoring God ever worked for anyone" -- and insisted he pray on his own, not just when she was there to remind him. Somehow she always knew if Matt lied.

He was never sure if the prayers did any good. He thought God probably had better things to do than listen to people mumbling gibberish day in and day out. But there was a certain comfort in the routine, and he liked the Joyful and Glorious Mysteries. The ideas seemed out of place in Hell's Kitchen -- too shining and grand for the grungy buildings and tired, shabby people -- and some of them went a little over Matt's head, but Sister Bernadette who taught his CCD classes said that love and hope were good things to remember. He wished his grandmother remembered them more often.

Sara Murdock died when Matt was eight, one month after his First Communion and six months before his accident. Heart attack in her sleep, just went to bed and never woke up. Matt found her body the next afternoon after school.

(He can still see her face, the unhappy slant of her mouth that even the slackness of death couldn't erase. It's one of his few childhood memories whose edges haven't blurred with time and the loss of any visual referents. He's not sure if he wishes the image had softened and faded like almost everything else.)

Matt forgot to pray that night, and woke shaking in the dim glow of streetlights shining through his bedroom window, terrified that his grandmother knew about his negligence and was telling God what a disappointment he was. He grabbed the rosary off his dresser and ran the cheap plastic beads through his fingers, hearing her voice -- tired, colorless, and somehow implacable -- explain the Sorrowful Mysteries, which she contemplated to the near exclusion of the others.

Matt thought about agony and scourging, about thorns and an exhausted path, about crucifixion and death.

He shoved the rosary under his pillow and did his best to pretend away the sour rush of guilt and the phantom glare of his grandmother's eyes.

In the morning, he poured the beads and cross into a sock that had lost its partner and tucked the little package carefully away in his dresser, behind his underwear. His dad noticed its absence after a while, but he never asked. He never asked about Matt's occasional hesitation at six o'clock, either, or the way he'd mouth Latin soundlessly in place of English during liturgical responses on the rare occasions an attack of conscience made him drag his son to mass. He never asked about Matt's nightmares, just sat silently by his bed on nights when memory twisted against him and yanked him gasping from his sleep.

Sara Murdock's legacy existed in absence rather than presence, in fear of the devil rather than love of God.

(Matt still has that rosary tucked away in a dresser drawer. He keeps it separate from his dad's relics, but he's never been able to throw it out.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm assuming the grandmother Matt refers to in episode one was his paternal grandmother, partly because her quoted line about the Murdock boys having the devil in them has the ring of an in-group insult rather than an out-group insult, but also because I think if she'd been his _maternal_ grandmother, Matt would know more than he seems to about what on earth happened to cut his mother so completely out of his life.
> 
> (Also, I am not Catholic, though I did grow up in a heavily Catholic town, so please feel free to tell me if I'm screwing up on that front.)


End file.
